David lassman/The Post-StandardA welcome sight in Syracuse: From left to right - Greg Murawski , Sam Waldau , Donald Johnson Jr., Jim Kurak, Ken Cannon, and foreman Gino Manzi - are part of a crew from the Syracuse Department of Public Works who cleaned a section of Interstate 81 north, just north of the Colvin Street entrance ramp, Friday. These areas are normally untouched by cleanup crews. The city now has an agreement deal with the state that allows the city to clean stretches of the Syracuse interstates.

A couple of trucks carrying a crew from the Syracuse Department of Public works pulled up Friday by a fence near the Carrier Dome. The workers, led by supervisor Gino Manzi, ducked their heads and popped through a hole. They waded through maybe 100 feet of brush before emerging on the northbound shoulder of Interstate 81, where they began filling plastic drums with piles of roadside garbage.

As far as anyone remembers, until that crew did a couple of cleanups last week, the state Department of Transportation had never allowed city workers to bag litter along I-81 or I-690 near downtown Syracuse.

“What we want to do in this city is give our children a little self-esteem,” said Kenneth Cannon, one of the workers. “And how do you do that if everywhere they look, they see trash?”

Over two days, Manzi said, the crew picked up a ton of debris — literally — from a small stretch of I-81, just north of Colvin Street. The workers were accompanied by Tim Carroll, the city’s director of mayoral initiatives, who said it’s been years since that area was cleaned.

For almost a decade, the state hired a contractor do fence-to-fence cleanups along highly visible city interstates. In 2008, because of budget cuts, that service ended. Garbage soon dominated many civic gateways. Traditionally, because of state safety concerns, city employees and jailhouse work crews were banned from helping with interstate cleanups — which left the cash-strapped state with a formidable challenge in keeping up with a flood of litter.

This summer, Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner and her aides took a hard look at Rochester, whose interstates are noticeably cleaner. The solution in Monroe County, Miner learned, is teamwork between the state and local agencies. The mayor asked Carroll to approach state Department of Transportation officials about taking a step toward similar cooperation here.

The state embraced the idea, with certain limits. Gene Cilento, spokesman for the DOT in Syracuse, said city crews won’t be allowed into the high-speed interstate canyons at the heart of downtown, simply because it would be too dangerous. But the DOT gave permission for municipal workers — and crews of defendants from the city’s Community Court — to clean along portions of the interstate with adequate shoulder room, as long the city makes sure the workers remain safe.

That was fine with Carroll. Last week, he asked the Community Court to send a supervised crew to bag trash along a strip of I-690. As for Manzi’s crew from public works, Carroll had already identified an area on I-81, near a busy exit for several hospitals and Syracuse University, where the garbage was thick as snow. To get there, Manzi went looking for holes in a nearby fence — holes probably created by homeless men and women, who use roadside brush for shelter.

By Thursday, the workers were filling drum after drum with garbage. Sam Waldau, a crew member, said the cause is obvious. “People don’t want trash in their cars,” he said, which means too many motorists feel no hesitation about using their own community as a dump.

Not long ago, Miner got a first-hand taste of that attitude. A city police officer, Jerry Mulherin, was giving the mayor a ride in Syracuse when Mulherin pulled up behind another car at a stop sign. Both vehicles, the mayor said, were idling directly in front of a city school.

As an incredulous Miner watched, the driver of the other car started throwing piles of garbage from the window. Mulherin turned and looked at the mayor, who said, “Absolutely.” The officer got out and approached the driver, whose young child had been watching from a car seat as his dad heaved trash into the street. Even so, the man was angry about getting ticketed for littering.

He told Mulherin, “Somebody will pick it up.”

In that statement, Miner sees an element of the divide at the core of so much heartbreak in the city. Too many residents feel no stake in the larger community, and they pass along that estrangement to their children. Trashed streets are just one symptom of a deeper sickness, which is evidenced — above all else — in acts of violence.

To beautify the city becomes one small step, a quiet statement, of hope and civility. “You can’t give up because it seems daunting,” Miner said. “You’ve got to change it slowly, and hope and believe it can reach a critical mass, and show people we’re not going to just wring our hands.” That said, last week’s cleanup involves recognition of a civic fact of life: